What Do You Want Most?

I found this quote on a fitness website (MyFitnessPal): “The reason most people fail instead of succeed is that they trade what they want the MOST for what they want at the MOMENT.”*

I’ve often fallen into that trap. I’m hungry, so even though I want to stay on my diet, I go through the drive through. I’m feeling down, so I go shopping for a new shirt, even though I want to stay on a budget. I’m tired, so instead of doing my consulting work, I read a book on my Kindle (or maybe even buy a new book instead of reading one of the many I already have).

In fact, figuring out what I want most, I think is one of the hardest things about goal setting. I know, intellectually, that I want to do/act/be a certain way, but I often feel like I have a hard time owning that feeling in a way that will help me commit to following through on the commitment over a long period of time.

My life is in transition here, both at Almost Frugal-land and abroad. I’ve been going through some growing and moving and changing for the past few months, and it’s been a bit of a bumpy ride. Things are good- no need to worry- but finding this quote today has helped me to sum things up.

I’m working on discovering what I want to happen most, not just what I want to happen in the moment.

What do you want to happen most?

*I don’t know to whom I should credit the quote- if you know, please leave the information in the comments.

I heard the same saying once, but a bit different — “Don’t sacrifice what you want for what you want NOW.” Same thing! I keep this in my head all the time. It really helps me especially when thinking about a budget.

I want most to be debt free, to be able to have money in the bank, to live a simple life, and to retire reasonably. Not so much to ask for, no?

After reading this I can relate with the wants versus needs. So many of us want more than we need. If you have discipline than you can sacrifice right now and have all your wants later on. A famous quote I have heard from Dave Ramsey that goes along with this is “Live like no one else now, so you can live like no one else later.”

What I want most is to find balance again. I finally quit my day job but instead of being ecstatic, I overloaded myself and am getting tired. I’m also slipping on my weight loss goals. Good luck to us both!

This quote is exactly what I needed to see right now. What I most want at this moment is to put together another web site — very different from the one I have now and one that involves learning a whole lot of code (double ugh!). It will mean stretching myself a whole lot farther and putting in an enormous amount of time. I have no problem with the creative end. The problem is the tedious technical stuff I will have to punch through. Keeping your quote in mind will be a help.

Finding that balance is important. I just read Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell and he talks about 10,000 hours being the amount of time it takes to be an expert at something. This has been making me rethink my goals because it’s hard to do 10,000 hours on 5 different things (work, health, etc etc.) I’m going to try to pick a few things I think and focus on them. Thanks for the post Kelly… interesting stuff

Its a great quote and like you i have no idea who said it and can’t find a reference on it on google either bar this site.
I guess we all ultimately have the trade off between what our goals are in say 10 years and our wants of today. My goal is to retire before 50 but the compromise is too also enjoy life and the years leading to that time. Does the holiday this year stop the main goal maybe!

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